


D is for Dalish

by moodymarshmallow



Series: Theron Mahariel, A to Z [Canon] [4]
Category: Dragon Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:05:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodymarshmallow/pseuds/moodymarshmallow





	D is for Dalish

_Fly straight and do not waver._   
_Bend but never break._   
_Together we are stronger than the one._   
_We are the last of the elvhenan, and never again shall we submit._     
  
The People live a life that is both static and shifting. The old ways never change, the magics have been the same since Arlathan, and the stories that the Keepers and elders tell to the children are untouched from when they were first told hundreds of years ago. The People do not change.    
  
But The People wander. In my thirty-some years with my clan, we roamed the face of Ferelden like migratory birds, staying no longer than one season before reigning the Halla and leaving only stories of landships to be told by skittish shems as we disappeared.    
  
Perhaps I do not waver, nor do I break, but I am no longer strengthened by my clan.    
  
Perhaps I still wander, but I am  _changed_ . There is something sick in my blood that is from without; it is not of The People, or The Dales. It marks me as an outsider among those with the same voices and ears of the ones who raised me. It is a brand, a scar, and a warning.    
  
That’s why I didn’t go back, after the archdemon. I can hold my head high and call myself Dalish and spread stories about how the  _Hero of Bloody Ferelden_  is a Dalish elf, yet I am something else now. I am a Grey Warden, I am a warrior, I am a lover and a murderer.    
My life is a study in befores and afters. Before the blight, before the taint, before the mirror, these are all things I can no longer touch. I live in my afters.    
  
Sometimes I feel as though I was only Dalish before—the void only knows what I am now.


End file.
